United States or Canada ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
At that moment, he dropped his pen on the floor and bent to pick it up, but was forestalled by Hotep. Then he addressed the scrolls, carefully dried the ink with a sprinkling of sand and delivered one to Hotep, the other to Kenkenes. "This to the king, and that to Snofru. The gods give thee safe journey," he continued to Kenkenes. "Who art thou, my son?" "I am the son of Mentu, holy Father.
He doubled back through the great rocks, his steps a little rapid and never hesitating, as though his destination were in full view. Mentu followed him, silent and moodily thoughtful. At last Hotep stopped. Before them was a narrow aisle leading down from the summit of the hill. It was hemmed in on each side by tumbled masses of stone.
It was short and distressed. "Kenkenes has not returned, Hotep, and since he is known to have gone upon the Nile, we fear that disaster has overtaken him. Come and help the unhappy murket. His household is so dismayed that it is useless. Come, and come quickly." The probability of the young artist's death in the Nile immediately took second place in the scribe's mind.
"Ye may call me forth," Kenkenes replied, "but how shall ye return me to my banks? Hither, sweet On," he continued, catching the hand of the fair-faced girl, "submit first to submergence." She took his kisses willingly. "This for Seti, thy lover; this for Hotep, thy brother, and this for me who am both in one. How thou art grown, Io!"
Shame in the proud man admits of no degrees of intensity. If it exist at all, it is superlative. To this was added the loss of Rachel. How little it would take to satisfy him, now that she was wholly denied to his eyes! Only to look down on her again, unseen, from his aery in the rocks over the valley! Hotep had offered him hope, based on circumstantial evidence and fact.
"A sister, my comforter, my one friend!" "Thou canst find sisters and comforters and friends among high-born women of Egypt. I had laid Kenkenes' folly concerning this Israelite to the moonshine genius in him. But the slave is a sorceress, for the madness touches whosoever looks upon her. Behold her worshipers first, thy father, Kenkenes, Hotep and thyself, and the gods know whom else.
"I would not have thee blight my chances with the full blaze of thy beauty." When Kenkenes returned Hotep looked at him with another thought than had been uppermost in his mind since he had noted his friend's dejection. This time, he was impatient with Kenkenes. "And such a man as this will permit a woman to break his heart!" Then was the young sculptor taken to the palace of the Pharaoh.
She was a dweller of the royal house. Far, far away from her were the unimperial quarters in which, once, she would have lived. There was her father there was Hotep She came upon him whom she sought. He was on the point of entering his apartments. He paused with his hands on the curtains and waited for her. "A word with thee, my Lord," she panted, chiefly from trepidation.
She offended against the lofty. Therefore, her punishment was the more heavy her isolation in death like to banishment in life." "So; if she had slighted a paraschite and tempted a beer brewer, her fate would have been less harsh. O, the justness of justice!" The morning was well advanced when they reached the niche on the hillside Hotep, wondering; Kenkenes, silent and expectant.
Whatever other blunder Meneptah might have made, he had redeemed himself in the wisdom he displayed in choosing his scribe. Kenkenes had been led to ask how Hotep had come to his place. "My superior, Pinem, died without a son," the scribe had explained; "and as my record was clean, and the princes had ever been my patrons, the Pharaoh exalted me to the scribeship."
Word Of The Day